Mixologists, whether professionals or amateurs, in commercial bars or at home, have a need for a variety of different types of tools. For example, mixologists typically need tools such as: a muddler to extract flavors from beverage ingredients, such as citrus fruit sections, by breaking or crushing the segments; a reamer to extract citrus fruit juice; a knife with a sharp or serrated blade to provide a multitude of cutting functions; a channel knife to create garnishes and decorative pieces from a lemon peel, for example; small and large jiggers to measure ingredients for beverages; a zester for peeling zest from lemons, oranges or other citrus fruit for flavoring a beverage; and a bottle opener, a corkscrew, a strainer and a stirrer to provide functions such as opening of bottles, removing corks from bottles, straining liquids, and stirring mixed beverages.
Such tools are often physically separate units and must be found and used separately. As a consequence the tools tend to clutter a bar or other work area and decrease the efficiency of the bartender who must individually locate each tool prior to use. In addition, the need to separately purchase multiple tools results in considerable expense.
It is known to provide a plurality of bartending tools as elements of a single unit. Some examples of multifunction tools may found, e.g., in U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,489 (Zeller et al) and U.S. Pat. No. 7,698,767 (Clark, Jr.), and U.S. Patent Application Pub. Nos. 2007/0211562 (Pitsis), 2011/0179581 (Hunkele), and 2011/0041348 (Silvers et al). The entire disclosures in all of these documents are incorporated herein by reference. The multi-purpose tools disclosed in these patent documents are limited in that they include only a few tools in each unit. The tool disclosed in the Hunkele application includes the largest number of tool heads, all of which fold into the handle so as to not extend therefrom in their closed positions. Specifically, the Hunkele tool has a structural form similar to that of the well known Swiss Army Knife and includes six fold out tools, namely a bottle opener, a corkscrew, a lemon peeler, a knife blade, a zester, and a wine bottle opener that functions in conjunction with the corkscrew. Thus, to serve the functions provided by the other tools listed above, a bartender must have separate individual tools.